I actually read JD Vance's memoir 'Hillbilly Elegy' (2016) — not because I wanted to read it, but I had watched Ron Howard's 2020 film 'Hillbilly Elegy', of which its screenplay is done by Vanessa Taylor. I watched it for actors Amy Adams and Glenn Close, but the screenplay and the story were both...... terribly boring.
Back then, I was like, if this dude is for real and is a Republican millennial, he might just win some Conservative ground in an election. Little did I know that James David Vance actually became Trump's running mate in July 2024, and openly adopted the same confrontational style leaning far right.
Then his remark about "childless cat ladies" running the country at a political campaign in 2021 got thrown up. He didn't bother to clarify, but doubled down on the remark and emphasized on "childless sociopaths" and "radical childless leaders". He used an age-old insult to criticize women, directly parroting history and its peculiar bias against women who don't have children, either by choice or by forced circumstances.
If the right wing groups view being a mother only as someone who biologically gave birth to children, then these remarks are just going to alienate single women.
The writer also reminded everyone that even as celebrities and noted figures and leaders publicly endorsed their candidates, a famous self-proclaimed cat lady named Taylor Swift, has yet to endorse any 2024 candidate.
In a 2021 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then-Senate-candidate Vance complained that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."
"It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance continued. “And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"
The summary also stated how this "centuries-old trope has a long tail". It listed a number of examples in popular culture about evil women and cats.
The women's suffrage movement could never get away from the association with cats and black cats huh. Stereotypes persist through history, till today. A failed democracy could return us to the era of Salem witch trials, or create the world that is Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' (1985).
I felt attacked. Hey, here's a Childless Dog Lady. I know plenty of Childless Dog Ladies. Our dogs aren't just a pet. It's worthy of medical insurance, our care and protection, as well as being a full-fledged member of our families.
I know many Childless Cat Ladies. These are some of the nicest humans around. Humans come in all types across the spectrum. Just because 'crazy cat lady' has a nice ring to it, doesn't make us insane. If you keep saying it, we might just make you go insane instead.
Also, wtf. It's none of anybody's business why we are CHILDLESS. CHILD-FREE. Why do people like imposing their social and religious norms on others in the society and make them conform to their notions of a 'family'.
What JD Vance had said, could well be the secret thoughts of some key leaders in our country's government, huge corporations, charity and religious organisations, and various interest groups. Especially a certain few that advocate for families and families to have children, and activities for parents and children, defining a 'family' in Singapore as 'heterosexual with kids', without seeing the irony of how 'exclusive' they are. They literally ostracized people and keep to their own echo chamber of people that they define to suit their social circles.
My Shiba Inu is so cat-like. She likes cats so much that she isn't going to like the comment very much either. I asked ChatGPT to do up a few 'Kamala for President 2024' posters. For fun. ChatGPT did a half-decent job in making a campaign poster.
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